It's 7:50am and we've been here for 3 hours now, waiting. Our train from Madurai arrived at Coimbatore at 3:30am and we got a bus here.
We could have got the train, but would have got crap seats according to Marky who sorted our ticket out. So we're about to embark on our Journey up to Ooty (Udhagamandalam) on the Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway. It's famous, according to the Guide,1 taking 4.5 hours to travel 46km!
The Lonely Planet is pretty scathing about Ooty, saying it's best avoided these days, but I think the writer is a bit of a night-owl because he/she/it gives a lot of importance to the quality of the pubs and beer.
Well we'll soon find out if it's true or not.